Facebook to let advertisers re-publish user posts

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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Facebook users who check in to a store or "like" a brand may soon find those actions re-transmitted on their friends' pages as a "Sponsored Story" paid for by advertisers.

Currently there is no way for users to decline this feature.

Facebook says this lets advertisers promote word-of-mouth recommendations that people already made on the site. The new, promoted posts would keep the same privacy setting that the original posting had.

But involving users in advertisements without their consent has been a thorny issue for Facebook. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says in this case Facebook is making money off a person's name or likeness without their consent. He calls it "subtle and misleading" and says users should object.

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sillyrabbit 2 years, 3 months ago

Great, trying to stimulate the economy and help sell products and we're supposed to object. Freakin' geniuses.

online_editor 2 years, 3 months ago

I'm wondering how the comments will be screened and approved. If I'm very clever in using irony or sarcasm in a way that it's critical of the advertiser, would that be recognized as such, or is some automation being used that wouldn't be able to detect that nuance? Perhaps automation flags a potential comment and a human double checks it for appropriateness.

On the other side of the coin, I wonder if they're also going to screen to find negative comments about advertisers, alerting them to the complaint so that the advertiser could contact the person and try to resolve the problem. I know there are public relations firms that already do that kind of thing, monitoring the general Internet for various companies. Like most things, any of these devices could be a good or bad thing, depending on how they're implemented. IMHO.

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